Well my new power supply might be here as early as Saturday. I ordered it today and the guy shipped it tonight.

I'm also wrapping things up on getting the Sabre flying again. I started by mixing up some thinned epoxy and I used q-tips to get it on to the bare wood and also put a little where the blind nuts were going to go. I haven't used blind nuts in a while so we will see how they hold up. I still put lock nuts on the bolts to hold the YS 63 on with. I also got the fuel tank mounted and plumbed. I may make some changes here but this is how it will be for a short bit. Lastly I put the spinner and prop on. Seems all I need to do is figure out how I want to bend the wire for the throttle and then run the engine.

Made it to the field today. I spent more time reminiscing with 2 other club members than flying of course but it was good and I was just wanting to take it easy because I'm still recovering from surgery. My throat started to get pretty swollen but when I got home I had a popsicle and iced it for 10 minutes and that helped a lot.

I still ended up getting 4 flights practicing the Sportsman sequence with the DeJaVu. I have now made it all the way through the entire sequence a few times. And to boot the wind was coming from the opposite direction that it normally does so it was good practice to have to go the other way.

The generator was great today. Started easy and allowed me to get the extra flights to be ready in a few weeks. Still going to need some more practice though.

Also still having tailwheel problems so I'm going to get a replacement and I'm going to work on my tail holder this week so I can keep in good condition. Thankfully it didn't seem to make much difference flying off of the grass.

I had the vendor add a second set of 4mm female bullets so I can hook up 2 chargers to it. Because they were just bare, I shrunk some tubing around them to identify which ones are positive and negative. I may need to either put a drop of glue to help hold them on or just use some electrical tape.

I'm going to look at what velcro has to offer and see what I want to use to hold it in the lid of my charging case.

Made it to the field today. My wife's best friend is having a baby shower tomorrow that I have to go to so it was one of the last chances I had to practice before the pattern contest next weekend.

Before I left, I made my tail prop/carrier for the DeJaVu. Works pretty good for protecting the tailwheel. Nothing too fancy.

I flew the DeJaVu 3 times working on the sequence and the EF Yak 54 for less than minute. The elevator servo failed on the Yak and I ended up crash landing it. The servo has been acting up for years but it was always solid in the air. Today I went up in a straight up vertical line, tried to put the plane into a spin, but it wouldn't go. I got right side up but the elevator wouldn't respond. It went in with a slightly down attitude kind of hard and it mostly survived. It's repairable and I will probably do so. When I get ready to replace the servo, I will look and see what is available since Airtronics is no more.

The main issue with this size in my opinion is the servos are just not up to task over the long term. Since I am also do for batteries, I may look into something else in a similar size but that takes more robust servos.

The double loops on the Sportsman sequence still needs some work on my end. I'm just happy that I was able to get through the sequence a few more times. I would've gone for a 4th flight but my generator started misfiring and smoking. My battery pack for the 3rd flight had just finished charging and you can only imagine my face when I look over to see a lot of smoke. I ran over and thankfully the generator wasn't on fire. I shut down the chargers and disconnected everything before I shut the generator down. The smoke was clearing up but I didn't want to chance it. Once it cooled down, I took off the panels and looked around but didn't see anything wrong. The oil reservoir seemed to be a little lower and I'm not sure what the damage is or if it needs to replaced. The owners manual said to contact the company for customer service so we will see what they say on Monday.

And the icing on the cake was the clip holding the tailwheel on went missing. Now I have to unstick a set screw to get the wheel collar off so I can keep my tailwheel on.

Pics of the Yak damage. Thankfully it didn't do any damage the prop or the new bearings.

I was able to get most of it back where it belongs so the work to fix is not too big of a deal. I may even just get something new to try and then repair this later as a backup if I decide to get something uses similar equipment.

The new EF 52" Extra or Slick would run $700 with new batteries. Not sure I want to drop that kind of money on something like this so the options are to get another 48" plane which I'm not 100% keen on unless I can find a better servo for the tail, I've been interested in getting a Flex Innovations Mamba 10 so there's that, and if I got a Mamba 10, I could get another plane for the YS 63, which I still need to run and I am still interested in doing.

I was looking around for wheel collars for the DeJaVu tailwheel and didn't want to spend a lot on shipping to have something here in time. I would've spent $4.99 to maybe have something to me in time for the contest but then I ended up finding these on Amazon.

I've been doing some thinking on my Yak situation. I'm probably going to start working on fixing it soon and I may buy another one new to build and then save the repaired one as a back up. If I go this route, I'm going to buy some KST215MG's to go in the tail and I may get a full set to replace all the servos.

Option 2 is to repair it and get a Mamba 10 still. I'm still interested in getting a biplane but it's also foam which I've found is OK but doesn't hold up as well over time.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum